Category Archives: J.R. Richard

Claim to fame: Richard may rank as another of baseball’s great What Ifs?, an ace pitcher for the Houston Astros whose career ended at 30 due to a stroke. He went 107-71 with a 3.15 ERA, winning at least 18 games four times, and it’s conceivable he might have gotten to 300 wins if not for his July 30, 1980 collapse during pre-game warm-ups. He’s set an admirable example, both as a player and as a survivor, someone who tried for years after his stroke without success to return to the majors, someone who wound up homeless and living under a highway overpass in 1994 and has since rebuilt his life.

The question for our purposes is if Richard did enough for a Hall of Fame plaque. Cooperstown has enshrined pitchers with truncated careers before, from Addie Joss to Dizzy Dean to Sandy Koufax, and Richard would have the fewest career wins of any of them. With a deeper look at his numbers, other factors come into play as well.

Current of Hall of Fame eligibility: Richard’s a candidate for the Veterans Committee, having made his sole appearance on the Baseball Writers Association of America ballot in 1986. Pitchers glutted the voting that year, and to some extent, they may have cancelled one another out. Catfish Hunter, Jim Bunning, and Lew Burdette, among others, fared better than Richard though no pitchers were enshrined in 1986. Richard’s 1.6 percent showing was better only than Ken Holtzman, Andy Messersmith, Jim Lonborg, and Jack Billingham for former front-end hurlers.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? I like Richard, and I’ll celebrate Richard as the very good player he was, but the flaws of his Cooperstown candidacy aren’t difficult to expose. Even if we set aside his underwhelming lifetime numbers, such as his 22.4 WAR as the byproduct of a shortened career, his 108 ERA+ and 1.243 WHIP don’t place him among the upper echelon of Hall of Fame pitchers. Richard’s an example of something else, too: Pitchers whose stats were bolstered by pitching in the offensive void that was the Houston Astrodome.

I’ve written here before how the cavernous dimensions and low run environment hurt the likes of Cesar Cedeno, Bob Watson, and Jim Wynn. The inverse may have been true for pitchers (and on a side note, if there’s a ballpark that’s confused more Hall of Fame cases, I’d love to know of it.) Richard wasn’t the most egregiously different pitcher between the Astros’ landmark former home and elsewhere, though his difference in splits is noticeable. Consider the following:

Player

W-L

ERA

IP

H

ER

BB

SO

SO/9

WHIP

J.R. Richard at the Astrodome

56-36

2.58

831

582

238

370

754

8.2

1.146

J.R. Richard, elsewhere

51-35

3.76

774.2

645

324

400

739

8.6

1.349

Larry Dierker at the Astrodome

87-49

2.71

1272

1100

383

361

882

6.2

1.149

Larry Dierker, elsewhere

52-74

4.02

1061.1

1029

474

350

611

5.2

1.299

Mike Hampton at the Astrodome

38-16

2.91

531.2

489

172

170

407

6.9

1.239

Mike Hampton, elsewhere

110-99

4.42

1736.2

1881

852

731

980

5.1

1.504

Darryl Kile at the Astrodome

35-35

3.51

630.1

565

246

282

534

7.6

1.344

Darryl Kile, elsewhere

98-84

4.37

1535

1570

746

918

1134

6.6

1.621

Nolan Ryan at the Astrodome

59-44

2.77

989.2

714

305

413

1004

9.1

1.139

Nolan Ryan, elsewhere

265-248

3.29

4396.2

3209

1606

2382

4710

9.6

1.272

Mike Scott at the Astrodome

65-40

2.70

937.1

741

281

244

729

7.0

1.051

Mike Scott, elsewhere

59-68

4.23

1131.1

1117

532

383

740

5.9

1.326

Don Wilson at the Astrodome

57-45

3.00

951

807

317

320

671

6.4

1.185

Don Wilson, elsewhere

47-47

3.33

797

672

295

320

612

6.9

1.245

If anything, Richard and others here are a bit overrated. Playing in a pitcher’s park and having tragic career-ending circumstances will do that for a man.